In July 1938, the FIGARO newspaper reported in a dispatch that mail from the Levant was stamped with stamps celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Aéropostale Marseille-Beirut air route. As a matter of fact, Lebanon post office issued on the 15th of July a stamp (Fig.1) and a souvenir sheet (Fig.2) celebrating this Aéropostale flight. The stamp depicts a CAMS-53, seaplane flying over Beirut and the figure of Nogues.

This cover destined to London was written on May 6, and mailed out of Beirut on 10 May 1845 (fig 1), about six month before the opening of the French post office in Beirut on November 16 and before the shipping route service by the French Paquebots de la Mediterrannee (*) to that same city. Despite the authorization by the French since 1837 to allow the British Post have their mail transported from Alexandria to England overland through Marseilles, the cover in this case used instead the direct route to England (i.e. through Gibraltar).

A brief prologue: Tito Vespasiano Micciarelli was born in Senigallia in 1811, participated in the attempted revolution in central Italy in 1831 and was forced into exile in Belgium and France. Returning to Italy yielding to the government’s proposals became Pontifical’s secret informer. Read more →